Portolan charts came into use on sailing vessels in the Mediterranean Sea toward the end of the 13th century. Made for and, in many cases, by seamen, these nautical maps were characterized by the system of intersecting loxodromes, or rhumb lines, which crisscross each chart and the ornamented compass rose that usually appears. This atlas of five manuscript charts has been attributed to Juan Oliva, a member of the illustrious Oliva family of Catalan chartmakers who began working in Majorca some time before 1550. The atlas was compiled no earlier ...

This portolan nautical chart, of Catalan origin, illustrates the coastal
areas of the Mediterranean Sea with a wealth
of detail, with toponyms of the inhabited areas shown without regard to
political-territorial divisions. Nautical
charts came into use on sailing vessels in the Mediterranean
toward the end of the 13th century, coinciding with much broader seafaring
activity and exploration. These charts supplemented the written instructions,
or portolanos, which had been used for several centuries and thus were
called portolan charts. The main centers of production for these charts were Spain and ...

This portolan chart by the prominent Italian cartographer and engraver Paolo Forlani is the first sea chart engraved and printed on copperplate. Forlani was born in Verona but flourished in Venice in 1560–74. Most of his maps appeared under the imprint of other publishers, including Giovanni Francesco Camocio, Ferrando Bertelli, and Bolognini Zaltieri in Venice and Claudio Duchetti in Rome―members of the Lafreri school of cartography, some of whose printing plates were still used well into the 17th century. Nominally a map of the Mediterranean Sea region, the ...